Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/22

 abuse exists, the offenders will be few and contemptible; and where the abuse is gross, our existing laws have provided severe penalties. But to declare by authority of parliament that the offenders are so numerous, and the abuse of so spreading and dangerous nature, that the severe penalties already enacted are inadequate to the preventing it, will not this suggest to every unprejudiced man the dread, that enemies so numerous could not have arisen without previous oppression, and that abuse so calculated to spread must have some foundation in truth? All censure to excite dislike; to forbid all discourses and publications that may tend to produce dislike of his Majesty, is in other words, to bestow on the first magistrate of a free country an  from all censure. I am aware, it will be objected, that such discourse or book must have uttered or published maliciously. But will the offender himself plead guilty to thy malicious intention? and if he himself does not plead guilty, what witnesses can be brought against the secrets of the heart? The law must in these cases judge of the intention by the effect; and where the effect is strong and clear, a complaisant Judge will always find himself incapable of

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